5 Fears You Can Overcome to Become a Social Selling Ninja

5 Fears You Can Overcome to Become a Social Selling Ninja

Do you want to become the social selling ninja you know you were meant to be but have fears about having such a public profile online?

You’ve probably already heard studies that show 70% of sales people who use social media outperform those who don’t use social media, and that sales reps who have leveraged social selling in their sales process are 79% more likely to attain their quota than those who don’t use social selling in their sales process.

You are beginning to understand the urgency of having exposure and presence in the online space to replace cold calling (which is dead), be where your buyers are and adapt your lead generation strategies. If the fears of PDA – publicly displayed social accounts are keeping you back, this blog is for you.

NB: These fears are totally normal. But by addressing them, you can get past them, fulfill your destiny as the social selling ninja you were meant to be, make your quotas and generate more sales.

5 Fears You Can Overcome to Become a Social Selling Ninja

1. Compare and despair

There’s nothing like getting on LinkedIn and being intimidated by the experience everyone else has that you do not. Degrees from Harvard, VP of this, Author if that.

There are 3 top things to remember here.

1) You will likely get hired for your particular combination of experience and personality. Embrace the uniqueness that is you.

2) In the case of LinkedIn, the summary section in particular provides an opportunity to communicate your personal traits and talents beyond your degrees and jobs.

3) Your buyer may have also gone to the same small community college you went to and may be disinclined to do business with a Harvard elitist.

2. I just don’t want to share that my major interest is stamp collecting with my business colleagues and clients (or the whole world for that matter).

The answer is: Why not? Whatever activities you do, others probably do and those things make you, you. Authenticity in today’s online marketplace is high value currency. And, it could be a compelling and interesting point of conversation. While rock climbing might appear cooler than stamp collecting, that dare devil activity may not be the thing that your buyer wants to have in their representative.

Those days are over and although you don’t want to admit it, you know that. The strategy now is to provide the message or it will be told for you — by your competitors, industry experts, and customers.

4. If I put up my picture people might judge me negatively about the way I look.

Except for certain exceptions, people want to work with people that look friendly. If you’re a working professional with a smart phone, you can surely take one good picture that demonstrates your happy and professional side — like someone your target prospect would find appealing. Put on your suit or a nice shirt or blouse and ask someone to take a picture of you in good, natural light. You simply can’t control how people react to you. Not worth your time. If you make an effort to put up an appealing, visually clear, updated picture, you don’t have a thing to worry about.

5. I fear that if I put up all the information about my services, the client will just do it themselves and not hire me.

If you don’t provide the information your competitor will, or ask.com will or google and so on. Especially if your competitor appears like more of an expert because they’re tweeting and blogging about important industry-related topics, it’s likely they’ll get the job over you. Your buyer is paying you for the expertise you bring to the work you do. If that’s not the value they were looking for, then they weren’t going to hire you anyway.

Once you get online and start engaging, you’ll find it’s not so scary after all. But that having been said, it’s always good to be a little scared because you always want to remember that whatever you put up there is there forever, so be thoughtful. Social media is for the long term so take your time to build relationships, be authentic, grow your network — and meet some nice people while you’re at it.

What other fears about getting on social media are keeping you from accelerating your sales career?